San Diego DUers: FTA Negotiations coming your way soon!
Got some time over the Fourth of July to promote great patriotic things like buy America, Make It in America, a clean environment, and human rights?
Negotiations are continuing on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA)--the next ones will be held in San Diego July 2-10. Can you participate?
The TPP FTA is a proposed trade agreement between the U.S. and eight other Pacific Rim countries (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam). Mexico, Canada, and Japan have also expressed interest in joining.
The administration has called this FTA a "new model." However, there are few indications that the substance of the agreement will differ in a significant, positive way from past trade agreements based on the NAFTA model -- meaning it is not clear how this will be an agreement for the 99% instead of the 1%). It is not evident that the “new model” includes the major changes that labor and progressive groups have been advocating for more than a decade.
While the Administration touts TPP as a job-creating enterprise, it has not commissioned a job impacts study to be done by the International Trade Commission. The Administration has provided no information as to how the TPP specifically will promote manufacturing more effectively than US trade policy has done for the past 20 years (during which time we have lost almost 700,000 jobs to NAFTA and more than 2.8 million to China after its entry into the WTO). In particular, bad trade deals since NAFTA have not only killed jobs and closed factories, but have pushed wages downward and contributed to the decline of labor unions in the private sector.
A major difference from past trade agreements is that a completed TPP would allow new countries to join, or "dock-on," at any time. This dock-on aspect could be one of the most critical of the entire agreement, as it would allow any country in the world to join the agreement at a later date. This includes China. It is also not yet clear whether the agreement will ensure that an up or down vote in Congress will take place for each new entrant (for example, new entrants can join the WTO without such a vote).
Negotiations for the TPP remain closed to the public, and the text of the agreement remains classified. The press has largely ignored the negotiations, even when they have happened on American soil. The American public seems largely unaware and unengaged in the process.
Are you interested in engaging? In helping to tell the Administration that this agreement MUST be different than the corporate-centric agreements of the past? If so, contact your local Occupy San Diego movement -- or send me a PM and I will put you in touch with the organizers. YOUR help can raise the profile on this agreement and make sure it works for the 99%.
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